Teardown video shows how the Galaxy S9 variable aperture works

The YouTube channel JerryRigEverything recently tore down (or rather tore apart...) the new Samsung Galaxy S9, giving us the closest look at yet at the new smartphone's camera hardware. So if the still images in the iFixit teardown weren't quite interesting enough for you, this might just do the trick.

The camera teardown is about one minute and a half long, running from the 3:30 mark until about 5:00. In that time, we get to see the Optical Image Stabilization system demoed and torn open to reveal the magnets inside:

Then, we get really close look at one of the phone's most intriguing features: the variable aperture. It turns out the system works using a little lever on the side of the housing. So when the phone senses that there is enough light to justify it, it'll flip this switch electronically and switch from it's world's-brightest F1.5 setting to F2.4.

Here's a very close look at that switch in action:

You can check out the full teardown in the video at the top. And stay tuned, because we'll be bringing you a full smartphone camera review of the Samsung Galaxy S9 just as soon as we can put a unit through its paces.

I wish smartphones would use a Mechanical Shutter instead of the rubbish called electronic shutter. The rolling shutter is a serious issues with moving subjects, especially in photos. With a mechanical shutter smartphones could easily shoot high speed photos pf moving subjects without motion blur. Nokia has some smartphones with a mechanical shuttet. For photos atleast, smartphones should engage one.

I’m not sure about what this minor close down is going to offer. Right now, smartphone lenses are designed the way microscope objectives are designed. That is, they can be designed optimally for their wide open aperture. Once you add a variable stop, even an insignificant one like this one, you can no longer do that.

And, of course, this goes against the trend of having a less elongated focus field.

It seems to be more of another Samsung gimmick than a really useful feature.

Nothing but the truth. Apple is quite far behind in terms of photo stacking. Pixel wipes the floor with Apple in low light. Style wise they're even further behind; those fat side bezels look terrible. Straight out of 2012.

they are "quite behind" in a lot of areas regarding hardware, as Arsalaan pointed out a few :) ... and there are kind of two reasons for it - first it introduces features if they get popular (not late enough to become irrelevant, but not fast enough to test the waters themselves). And the second is that they are very crazy with design and size ... so basically they work to see if a certain feature (say dual camera, say wireless charging, say whatever) can be made small enough to be integrated without impacting much the overall design.

Now don't get me wrong, i know they are also trying to look innovative, but just playing it as safe as possible. And they also manage to do pull a lot of things very good ... as the CPU in the new iPhones that is some 2 generations ahead of the competition .. and that extra power is of-course used to pull a lot more from similar hardware :)

@redtailboas ... common, let's move over this fanboy attitude, is samsung paying you anything? First ... i said "two generations" ... just to avoid being too specific, you know sometimes a generation gap between processors almost insignificant, sometimes pretty impressive. I just wanted to say that it was much better than any CPU in the market at that moment.

When it became available it was some 25-50% better (depending on benchmark) than any other phone available. In my book that was impressive. The S9 was launched 6 months later, so i find it quite normal to try to catch up at least. By the way, for your info, i am a Samsung user, just not a fanboy. :)

That’s all nonsense. Samsung first began becoming really successful in smartphone after they began copying Apple. They do come out with a lot of “features” that don’t actually work, which is often mentioned in reviews, but then ignored.

That is why i said that apple plays safer - it just (usually) wait for a feature to be tested by others. Let's remember the brand new and original "face-unlock" feature in apple, that also ... kind of works, but not 100% - that is the risk when you are the first to offer a feature.

Nothing fanboy about it, kiddo. Just correcting some incorrect info. Someone said processor wise the competition was 2 years behind... Absolute nonsense. And the side bezels on iPhone truly look like something out of a few years back.

I dont know if variable aperture is only a marketing trick or if it indeed is useful. I would like to hear an explanation from someone thats knows more. Stopping down maybe gives you sharper images or is like having an ND filter. More depth of field is also a reason but not so immortant i believe given the sensor size.

Remember movies look most natural with a shutter speed half the frame time (so 1/60th for 30fps). It's almost impossible to do that in bright light with the fixed-aperture f1.8-f2 lenses phone cameras have, despite the sensors mostly going down to ISO 20-25.

No, it will not “definitely” give sharper images. It may give images that are less sharp, because designers can no longer have an optimal aperture to design for. One major reason smartphone lenses are as good as they are is because they have just one aperture. When you begin to add stops, even a minor one like this, you need to compromise.

It makes a lot of sense: with phone camera pushing apertures as wide as f/1.5 those optics physically must have their weaknesses, mainly lack of contrast and sharpness on the edges. Those tradeoffs are worth the possibility to use lower iso in low light situations, but having just two little pieces of thin plastics and a micro actuator you can avoid them when there's enough light!

I meant more along the lines of the fact that it is a simple lever controlled aperture - perhaps the most basic and common way of controlling a variable aperture. Not that it's unreasonable for them to do it this way, just not sure how it's newsworthy when it's not even the first smartphone to get a variable aperture in Samsung's own lineup,

Sensor size is 1/2.55" for the GS9 which is roughly standard for most premium Android phones but iPhones are still using much smaller 1/3" - 1/3.6" sensors. Noise performance is so poor in fact, on the smaller 'telephoto' sensors that the "plus" iPhone models revert to a cropped version of the 'wide angle' sensor instead.

The best way we have seen so far to get rid of smartphone noise is google's stacked image approach, averaging 9 images to rid of most of the noise without having to smear it with NR.

" Because restricting even more light to a crazy small sensor is a good idea because?"

Really, which part of my explanation was the hard part to understand? They actually allow MORE light to the sensor through a LARGER aperture. The stop down feature is an added choice, for when you don't want the trade off in sharpness and corner light fall off that comes with those larger apertures (among other issues with a steep angle of incidence).

The real world use has already been established.

@ DualSystemGuy:Most high end phones now employ stacking (Apple, Google, Samsung etc.). The difference is in the execution, for example the S9 takes a few more frames than the S8 for better noise and detail handling too.

...if diffraction was the only reason to add an adjustable aperture and if diffraction was a hard limit, rather than one with a slope (diminishing returns still means returns). Neither of which is true.

In fact, the older S6 with its 16 MP sensor was able to resolve more detail in RAW than the current high end 12MP phones, despite similarly sized sensors. But corner sharpness, vignetting and aberrations at large apertures have little to do with diffraction to begin with.

dude... diffraction increases by adding an aperture. Why would increased diffraction be a reason to add an aperture. And you can keep talking about 'corner sharpness, vignetting and aberrations' but so far there's been no indication that stopping it down makes any notable difference at all. Not to mention the multitude of other ways to solve these things on a smartphone that don't involve adding more moving parts.

If adding a variable aperture helps, why not make it f8 or f16? iPhone X and S8/S9 are very close in image quality but samsung does use larger sensor. Could you link us to a comparison wide open vs stopped down on the S9 that shows how much better it is or the difference? Its a gimmick that samsung will do away with possibly by the next generation phone.

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